


God is dead and no one cares.

by graspthesanity



Series: C. Year Zero [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Dystopia, F/M, Kylux - Freeform, M/M, Reylo - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:29:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22024132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/graspthesanity/pseuds/graspthesanity
Summary: AU. The world is cracking one piece at a time. No fertility. Death penalty with an all record high. God died, leaving anarchy to overpower... For Rey to search.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: C. Year Zero [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1684438
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	1. I

I remember how my mother gasped and my dad cried, prayer held no meaning. All crosses would slowly be taken down, some churches were burnt, others abandoned and there was a literal witch hunt among the astronauts and cosmonauts. I remember how my dad was going crazy that anyone who spoke a different language could be called up. Everyone eventually was. Everyone had to observe a dog biting a shoe and swinging it around, as some psychological test on how they would react. 

Some were taken to blame. 

“Who bit the hand that fed us?” 

It was asked, whispered and no one knew. Soon enough a revolution went around the world, anarchy became catastrophic and necessary. No one knew how the hospitals worked, how money still was printed and who even voted on the harshest rules of death penalty. Nazism was wiped out. Everyone was equal. But we could step right. Or left. Or even do a circle. 

I started working in a newspaper. 

My mother cried, raising the newspaper and tearing it apart into two sides, screaming. 

“I will never have grandchildren. God is taking us down with him!”

God after his death... Kept giving us these gifts. Eternal AIDS, removing the ability to conceive from everyone, it was as if the clock was ticking and oceans started drying up like deserts... But the temperature never changed. Only one placed... kept its waves. Collected all the waves. 

“They say...” Armitage spoke to me, grinning, as we were in a dark nightclub on a Halloween night. 

The final day of God was registered as the theme of the party. We all have the clothes with pins and at the end of it, half of these pins were thrown away and ripped off like buttons. 

“...that the rule of two applies to God as well.” Armitage laughed, way too drunk and leaning a bit close to me, so that I had no escape but to keep talking and he caught my attention. Maybe it was a glimmer in my eyes. 

“God was killed...”

“I know that.”

“But have you seen who?”

I blinked a few times, he grabbed my hand and we walked for hours, silently. He even dropped a strip of condoms as we stumbled out of the city, hitch-hiked and then paid for a taxi in another town. 

We reached the only ocean. 

The waves were rough. 

He grinned at me with fake vampire teeth, God dying on a Halloween and this prop made it nearly comical. 

I embraced myself. 

“You ever got fucked by a God, Rey?” I snapped at my own name and hastily shook my head. 

“Men are more his taste... But you'll do.”

“You make me sound like a sacrifice.”

“What's the point when you can't conceive... and your boyfriend died during the execution?” I shivered, closing my eyes. “People don't like black people anymore... do they?” 

“No.”

“So go on your knees and maybe God will hear your prayer, Palpatine.”

Hux smirked. 

“When they thought that dogs were the only who couldn't reproduce... They killed my dog too.” I nervously started gesticulating. “It was the first bullet in their chamber.”

My eyes swell up.

“Finn was all of the rest.” Hux puts an arm around me and pulls me close. His perfume oddly smells of talc. “There is no point in the power of prayer.”

Hux's teeth kept showing up and I wouldn't exactly feel at ease from the plastic things which reminded me of what was supposed to be a good childhood leading into teenage years with first kisses, experiences, bruised knees, climbing buildings with no curfews and praying to a God which we thought cared. 

But he didn't.

That's why he dropped the church roof on the signing choir, wasn't it? To show power... Before death. Even God... A God can be selfish.” I heard the voice loud and clear and then turned around to see no one, besides me and Hux and the waves soothing. He kept his maniacal grin and stretched my hand to meet his and we walked on water. I thought we would drown and I kept looking back, as we avoided the waves like trees in a forest, they wouldn't even crash into us... Why were we Jesus all of a sudden? I had so many questions until... I saw him. 

He looked up, eyes closed and when he opened I could see a thousand reflections, a thousand deaths... All done by humanity... And Finn's screech could be heard as the reflection. 

“God is cruel.” He tilted his head. “But to get rid of him... I had to become him... Hear his selfish pain, his voices... All of the anger, Rey, all of it.” 

He stood up, towered above me, his hair reaching his shoulders in a tightly knit black sweater. He didn't even leave a print on the sand, quickly did a motion with his hand and the waves started their symphony of a storm painting. He didn't want anyone else here. Just me, Armitage and himself. I couldn't look into his eyes. He blinked and then they became white. He smiled. 

“God is only supposed to see the reflection of your prayer...”

“So you're blind.” I replied hastily. 

“Yes. And no. I see you. I see your insides... How your bones mismatch into the human form and I appear as... this... for your own curiosity. To some I appear as another strange, strange, looking man. But you want me approachable...” He turned to Hux. Armitage nodded and pretended to be walking away... until he wouldn't be able to hear us and pretend that he could control the waves. They crashed roughly. “Because you've lost lover after lover... after lover.” 

I shiver. 

“Is this why you came to pray, Rey? To find love... Not fertility... No...” He stretched his hand to touch my cheek and I took a step back. He smiled softly. 

“It doesn't matter where you go... Once someone dies... They leave a trace, and you went after it...” He spoke in deep pauses, taking breaths after nearly every word. I lowered my head. 

“Why didn't you come sooner, Rey?” 

Armitage was now walking back, within our distance and our new God motioned for the waves to crash louder. 

“Because... you've found another.” I remained silent. “You wanted me to say it... But you never did. You just took your fate, gambled with other men... Until you couldn't... A dream within a dream is such a simple way of describing reality shifts... To escape-”

His eyes wide and white.

“Death of a beloved. You risked it all... Droids... Friends, soon to be lovers... Even yourself, dear... Just for the rule of two.” I was bawling now and I couldn't allow him to touch me. “There is no way back if we touch. Death will reach you... Fertility gone. Humanity gone... Just your own self... With me. Is it worth it?”

I closed my eyes, nodded and sat on the sand, feeling the water touch my feet through the sandals I had been wearing. 

“Rey...”

My shaking hands... were now off my face and I reached for Kylo's knee.

“Yes. It's worth it.” And waves crashed, made noise, Armitage looked around lost. More newspapers would be printed, talking about how we need to control the new God in his ruins, until they would fear he'd get bored... But would he?

I sat next to him, his big, white eyes... Now reflecting waves... And desire. We sat there for long, until we finally held hands and kissed, until my breath stopped where I came from and a Wookie screech was heard, a tear dropped, but all knew... Where I had gone. We didn't need to jump. We didn't need to run. We let time pass... A time where... We could exist together in peace, even with the world burning... From ashes we fell, never to rise again once the clock would reach Halloween for all the years it would take.


	2. II

One dead. 

Two dead.

The news were taking over as I walked around the city, watching at least one person glued to the screen. It was an odd timeline to live in, where time barely existed. We were like the afterlife composed of someone's memory. An old tale I've been told about what lies beyond. I quit my job in the newspaper business, I felt like I was printing more and more deaths caused by Kylo's fingers. But that didn't stop me from thinking about walking on water again. 

I haven't visited since last Halloween, letting things unravel between him and Hux. They seemed to be on their own spinning waltz where both hands on each waist and each took turns to twirl. I just watched.

One day I caught Hux outside the laundromat. The oddest law to pass since anarchy. Was it even anarchy before? Was it something like structured then? Was Kylo behind all of this. I spent all year tossing and turning, until I would only sleep in headphones with loud music so that I wouldn't hear Kylo in my dreams until the day before Halloween I woke up with them split in half by a lightsaber. 

“...Why now?” Hux asked, smoking a cigarette outside the laundromat. Why did we even have a shortage of washing machines now? I've heard of the rumor that people started building ships from them to reach Kylo, thinking that the harder the exterior and the most unpredictable would let it slip by, but he destroyed them with a simple twist of the hand, choking the machine and the people inside. They didn't even know what they even wanted. 

They wanted to free themselves of a God they now despised... Because they thought that one person was all it took to kill God, but once one sees the fact that all it takes is death for a new God, everyone is thirsty for blue blood or whatever blood God should have. It was like a crazy manhunt. 

Halloween. 

No one would come again. No one would ask. 

“Because I want him as much as you do.” I answered Hux and he lead the way, motioning towards the waves after the long ride, where we exchanged stories of people we've never heard of making the news.

“Who are they?” Hux asked, as I snacked on pretzels in the back of a truck, as the wind kept nearly blowing away the newspaper in his hands. 

Three dead.

Four dead.

It was as if the ink was magic. 

I lifted my head up, my hands up and the waves grew larger and larger.

Kylo's prison.

All ready and set for a visitor. I walked on the waves, Hux trailing behind me, pointing a dagger. 

“Kylo's angry that you haven't visited him for so long.” He said as I felt a tip and the steel brushing against my woollen sweater, as I tried to look back but thought different of it. “He wants you again, bitch.” 

I closed my eyes and kept on walking. 

When we arrived at the beach, Kylo was there, wearing Vader's mask. One eye fully exposed and a grin crumbling.

“Don't you think it's time for God to show his power?”

“Like crushing women in a praying church?” 

“No, no... No one even holds photos for me anymore, Rey. Our memories become erased and integrated every year we stay here... Right, Armitage?” Hux puts his dagger away. Kylo creates a vortex of waves around us, so tall that I wouldn't even be able to walk on them. He pins me against a wave and it feels like glass. He takes Hux's dagger and scratches the glass with it, like a cat. 

“The exit... Back to Exagol, Rey. Where it all began... Where you went again, once my life was taken and gone for good, once you married me without me knowing. Without anyone knowing. You didn't want to be a Palpatine-”

“Ben.”

He takes the dagger out, eye widened. 

“I will live here even with all memories forgotten. Just with you.”

“So you visit me only on Halloween?”

“Because it's safe.”

“Because you forget.” He says through grit teeth and the spit reaches me. “Finn is dead. You needed a sacrifice. Poe died while you were here... This is your throne... Your empress.” And he points one finger at the entrance, which unzips itself showing the Sith throne. 

“Palpatine and Skywalker... Now I'm Palpatine... With all your love... Comes the hatred of the Sith.” Hux chuckles. We both look at him, before Kylo takes off his mask and his eyes are white again and he lets go of me. 

“All I want is love.”

“And I do.” He goes back to his quarters and Halloween ends. 

What is a daily life? 

What's love?

I look at my reflection in the mirror. 

What's desire?

I've touched myself.

What am I?

What doesn't make me God? 

Why aren't we all God?

Have we always been since Kylo murdered him and now we know that it's Kylo? That he's the one pulling the strings of the world, travelling madly across the galaxy, making sure we are attached and him laughing at how futile is the end of the only species left. 

I light candles once I'm back home, putting everything away and looking out to the sea. Words get stuck in my throat and I start humming softly, before I break down into singing and memories come back. When Kylo wasn't cursed as a God, when we weren't locked to do a lost civilisation on Exagon, yet here we are, as if we were the dead which Kylo wanted alive until we would all crumble and blow on our own cracks between our skin tissues. Then I keep watching the fire, all electricity gone due to the storm and the waves crashing to find entrance to Kylo. 

What was the escape from Exagol? Would I be able to get Kylo out? Did I still love? I sang louder, my heart trying to reach his pale skin and his dead eyes. But he could see the galaxy and he had all the power, ready to kill everyone and everything around him. It would only be a question of matter and time. We were all walking on Hux's dagger, to fall down into the pit of waves to never scream again. 

I could feel his arms around me.

Why didn't I visit him more often?

Because I didn't want to die. I wanted to see him more, make him frustrated and not end us all. Even if this was some afterlife... Some last words, I wanted them to last and it was like the last seconds of making love, before the waves wash over you and the stress goes free and you lay together... Knowing that the connection is mental, rather than physical like it was for those moments.

I wanted to love Kylo forever. 

And that was my curse. That was what I was putting everyone alive on Exagol through. 

But one day, the waves were mild and I strolled through the city and another day came like that and so came another, another, another. 

Like a spinning hologram on repeat. It seemed to drive me crazy and I kept thinking of Kylo, yer I couldn't visit him. So I sat there on my bed, watching the waves rise and make path, only for me to see. If I died... would the remaining inhabitants of Exagol be free? Would we all be free in death? I looked at Hux's dagger and couldn't stop myself from the thoughts, but my arms didn't move. All I could think about was Kylo and how it was hard to get to Exagol, the deaths... All for love. Is that what would happen to everyone? Does everyone sacrifice a few plants, a few lives, a few ships and quick thinking just to see their blind beloved turn into a Sith... forever? I dug my nails into the mattress and screamed, letting the waves open and all my previous wounds flow all my blood out and in. I was grieving.


	3. Chapter 3

False memories would cross my mind, I wish for so many things. For running and not looking back, never keeping secrets and finding solace in his arms.

I went there, running, crossing the water until Kylo stood there, his hair a disaster due to the strong wind of the seas. I ran into his arms. What could we do?

A disease started spreading and I couldn’t help but keep looking back, counting the number of people on the streets as if they were crows, vanishing one by one in some twisted way of the days. People were dying so suddenly that you could step over a corpse and crack its ribcage. 

I shaved my head that day, nervously trimming it shorter and shorter until nothing was left.

Maybe nothing was left of me as well, so I shaved it. It seemed like everyone knew what was coming and that the calamity couldn’t be prevented, that God was indeed dead and even if we walk around with our own matters in our hands, there is no end to isolation, there is no end to solution. We will never be able to do anything again, we will start vanishing and soon just like cookie crumbs eaten after a veteran, it will end. It stops mattering who we once cared about, love starts vanishing and I run to Kylo, who looks past my hair and we stand there. No more screaming Armitage, no more wakeful nights where I ask myself what monogamy is. 

“Why is the world ending?!” It comes out as a whimper. Kylo just holds me like Titans would hold galaxies, like Jedis once believed in the force and he holds me with all his might. I close my eyes. 

The impact strikes first at midnight when I don’t know if I am in Kylo’s arms or in my own lonely bed, both juts as cosy, but a question of love is always asked in the mirror… until fear manages to peel us like a fruit and squish us so that we become saturated with love. 

I cried. 

I didn´t see anyone, I could see no more soul, no more fighting, no more force, just lifeless bodies crashing on the waves. 

The second impact came and we cried.

The third came with lips crossed against the other. 

And so did the fourth. 

Fifth.

Six.

7

3  
2

1

RAGH!

I wake up to blood rushing out of my nose, all my wounds and Kylo dead-like around me, his fragments summoning each other like parts of a puzzle piece, a glitter warm enough to see the sun. The titan had collapsed. It wasn’t even seconds. We were trapped in time together. Two fragments make a whole and thus, they travel together for an eternity. To be lost, engraved, worn and lost again.

Once I read a story… Where the rose had become an accessory for a bathroom when the bird had sacrificed its life for a man to declare love for the woman. I won’t recall now. But… Did it matter?

We all weren’t even trees with branches or a broch. 

We were just a fragment. Fluttering to explode and dissolve, be eaten, be coerced, be consumed, be changed and then… forgotten. 

I looked at Kylo around me and closed my eyes for the last time to forever see… What eternity meant and love love love

Because stripping the essence, never erased feelings and there is a reason why immortality exists… Because we recall, we end, we follow and we become a broch for an empress to discuss flirtatious matters with others and we won’t even hear. Soon enough… All will be back to normal, the city will overflow with people and I will forget that we had once ever died, just knowing that the bruise on my lip was because of a strong kiss to keep myself healed and Kylo… alive. 

We couldn’t die. The next day came and my hair was shaved, but the people whose faces I recognized were still there. Was this how the end looked like? A never-ending loop which would swallow us all and let us drown in pure torture of our sorrow. I didn’t know… Why did we have such a punishment, why wouldn’t the waves ever calm down and why was Kylo still a prisoner to his island? Why couldn’t he leave and join me in the misery of people dying and coming back to life the next day? Were we a broken snow globe which a child was fixing every day in a time of war?

Who were we now? It felt like we were squeezed out. I would walk further and further down the streets, as if in a dream, never-ending streets which indicated that there was no end of the world, no repetition either, sometimes poverty and sometimes very, very high, above us all, but Kylo held them. Why? We all had to die eventually, right? Even eternity’s balloon would pop with a needle… We couldn’t just float in space forever, right? We had a beginning, so where was our ending? When would we die?

When would we fucking die? 

When would this road end? 

They stopped broadcasting the news. I felt like everything could be a headline, bicycle crashes, stores closing and lights blinking and not blinking again. My head was spinning. That could be a headline as well, since we had none… I would choose channel after channel and it didn’t matter because none of them were working, up to the point that I turned off the television and the screen showed me how skinny and nervous I´ve gotten. I wondered so much about everything else, that I had forgotten about myself. 

I went to Kylo and we sat quietly, until he noted that today was a repetition of the previous day before yesterday, but the disaster never came tomorrow. Instead we got something closer to another day before the one we had been in. It was as if things were going, but there was some little restoration, but Kylo didn’t dare to get out of the island. Hux had vanished and I wondered if he was a titan as well of sorts. Who was he anyway here in this puzzle? 

Only when he came back, time went forwards, continuing the spiral of C.’s contamination. Hux had called it such and it made me wonder what it really stood for, but for us… It could’ve been anything and effects would’ve been just as deadly. We sat there, all the three of us, wondering when would the world end, we had aged significantly mentally… But there was no turning back, was there?

I closed my eyes, watching Kylo take Hux’s hand. I might be at peace. 

I woke up in my bed the next morning and the sun wasn’t shining, but my hair had grown and as soon as I put my feet on the floor, I felt wood for a brief second instead of the usual flooring, which caused me to wonder what cursed memory had I stumbled upon, as I heard whispers coming from the street. 

I yanked the curtains open and looked outside to find Kylo covered in seaweed on the street. Looking up, as people in masks looked around and pointed at him, mask-less, but so was I.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy!

**Author's Note:**

> I saw TROS today and I love it! I was nearly crying at the end and... it was just so beautiful, but just like everyone else... I wanted a happier ending, but I loved it regardless. I wanted to channel a different dystopia for this story and I've been on a roll of one-shots, so keep an eye out! Thank you!


End file.
